Jackson Jones and the Puddle of Thorns

by Mary Quattlebaum

  “What?” I yelped.

  Gaby eyed me coolly. “My payment.”

  “Juana,” wailed Ro.

  “You used these children.” Juana turned on me, her dark eyes flashing.

  “Gaby said she’d help for free—”

  “Cheat,” said Juana. “Selling your mama’s present.”

  “Pay up.” Gaby stuck out her palm.

  “Big money man,” Juana spat.

  She grabbed Gaby’s hand. Her sandals slapped furiously on the sidewalk.

  “Seven bucks, Bouquet Jones,” Gaby screamed, pulling at Juana. “You owe me seven bucks.”

  I wandered back to the garden.

  Counted the flowers. Sixty-nine.

  Counted again. Sixty-seven.

  Counted again. Seventy.

  Funny how a ten-spot can weigh kind of heavy.

  News travels fast when a man makes money.

  Some people are happy. “Mr. Cool is successful!” Miz Lady bellowed in the hall.

  Some people are skeptical. “Tell me again how you got that money,” said Mama.

  Some people are angry. “Cheat,” Juana hissed whenever she saw me.

  Some people are silent. Frozen-faced Reuben.

  Some people are mean. Blood Green.

  All those happy, skeptical, angry, even silent people I could deal with. Mean was a different matter.

  After I sold my first bunch of flowers, Blood seemed to get even meaner. On a mean scale of 1 to 10 Blood usually hovered at about 9.5. Suddenly he was a 13.

  He tripped me at recess.

  Stole my math homework once and wiped his shoes with it.

  Made kiss noises behind my back.

  And constantly whispered, screeched, cawed, “Bouquet Jones! Bouquet Jones!”

  These days at school everyone called me Bouquet Jones.

  My cool reputation was shot.

  The day Blood calmly flattened my sandwich, I had had about enough. First, tuna (with celery and lots of mayonnaise) is my favorite. Not to mention that his method of flattening was to sit his big butt square on my lunch. Then hand it back to me. Then smirk.

  I spent all of English class fantasizing how I was a superhero who didn’t know he was a superhero. But then some injustice—like having my lunch squashed—triggered a surge of power. In my best fantasy my arms grew meatier, my legs mightier, my brain brainier, and my eyes emitted powerful rays. And guess who I tackled first?

  After school I moseyed to the garden, mostly to examine my crop and comfort myself. Mailbags was there, checking his cucumber vines.

  As I’ve said before, Mailbags is huge. He could be his own mail truck. He always looked kind of funny stooped over his leaves, like a buffalo smiling at a violet.

  He turned his buffalo smile to me. “You’re looking wrung out, little man.”

  Now, I’m not one to blab my troubles, but my mind was so full of Blood and his Bouquet Jones that I blurted, “Why is Blood such a jerk?”

  Mailbags fingered a bean blossom. “Some people get mean when someone has something they want.”

  I almost fell over. “Blood Green wants a garden?”

  “Maybe he’s just wanting.”

  “He’s wanting to pick on me.”

  “’Fraid so.”

  I stubbed the dirt.

  “The way I see it,” said Mailbags, adjusting his tomato cages, “you got three choices. Number one: fight him.”

  “That’s suicide.”

  “Ignore him.”

  “I’ve been doing that. It doesn’t work.”

  Mailbags pulled a stray weed. “Or you can dig up your garden.”

  “Dig up seventy dollars’ worth of flowers?”

  Mailbags shrugged. “There’d be nothing to make you different then,” he said. “No one jealous. Everyone the same.”

  “Is Blood jealous?”

  “He’s wanting something that you have,” said Mailbags. “He’s looking for an excuse to be mean—some folks are like that. Your problem is, how you gonna handle it?”

  Thanks for stating the obvious, I thought.

  Mailbags unwound and carefully rewound the twine around the bean plants. “People mess with you even when you’re grown,” he said. He kept monkeying with the twine. “Some folks at the post office are always in my face saying, ‘College, man, you are too old. You learning little numbers. What good is that?”’

  I couldn’t imagine anyone being fool enough to mess with Mailbags. He could just scrape them off the way a buffalo brushes flies. Lay some big fists on them.

  That’s what I’d do to Blood. If I had big fists.

  “So, what do you do?”

  Mailbags considered a moment. “Still going to classes,” he said, picking up the spade. “Still learning those little numbers they laugh at.”

  I watched as he loosened the dirt around his squash plants. Seems like Mailbags grows every weird vegetable in the world.

  “You still see Reuben, you know, in my garden early in the morning?”

  “I thought that was the mist.”

  “Do you see him?” I persisted.

  “That time of morning I don’t see so well,” said Mailbags. “Why don’t you ask him?”

  I stubbed at the dirt.

  “Jackson, please don’t rearrange my garden with your big shoes.”

  I stopped stubbing.

  Dig, dig, dig, went Mailbags’s spade.

  “I’m right, he’s wrong,” I said.

  “Indeed.”

  “He started it, saying he wanted to quit.”

  “It’s always that way.”

  “Reuben is slow. I was only speaking the truth.”

  Dig, dig, dig, went Mailbags’s spade.

  I stomped off.

  Anyway, I got no time for thinking about Blood, that flashy-eyed Juana, and Reuben, my former friend.

  I got to fix up the garden for Mama’s birthday.

  I smoothed the wood-chip path, watered the flowers, searched for weeds. No weeds.

  Three more days—and Mama would have her present.

  Four more days—and I’d have my present. Been waiting since April 10, my official birthday, for this basketball. Then a whole summer of dribbling, slam-dunking. One-on-one. Me against myself. All summer. I’d finally play someone who wasn’t S-L-O-W.

  Two days before Mama’s birthday I was out the door early, racing the long way to school to check out the garden. Maybe catch a glimpse of that morning-mist boy seen by Mailbags. Maybe talk to him. Maybe not.

  The wet grass clung to my one white and my one mud-stained shoe. The lemon sun had shined up the gate latch. Wood chips crunched in the quiet. Some birds chattered.

  The garden.

  I couldn’t believe what I saw.

  The garden.

  I sat down hard. Drew my knees close.

  Somewhere a woodpecker: tat-tat tat-tat-tat. Silence.

  Who could be that mean?

  I knew someone who could be that mean.

  Leaves rustled, stems waved in the breeze.

  No flowers.

  My garden looked like someone had carefully sliced each flower from the top of its stem. Taken a pair of scissors, maybe, or a knife. Chop, chop, chop.

  Seventy bucks gone.

  Seventy flowers gone.

  Those bare stems waving, waving.

  My Basketball City summer just drained out of me. Ball, Mama’s present—gone.

  I sat for a long time. Till I was late for school. Then I sat some more.

  I was tired of such meanness.

  Tat-tat-tat. Silence. Tat-tat-tat. Silence.

  I told my teacher, Ms. Wanbe, I was late because I woke up sick. She said did I want to go to the nurse. I said no. She said take out your reading book.

  The whole time I read, I plotted my revenge. I felt superhero strong. Just wait till recess.

  I glanced over at Reuben. He didn’t look too good. I knew he knew about the garden, my mama’s present, everything.

  I
wished I could tell him what I was going to do.

  Reuben, I wanted to say, in case you never see me again, I give you my share of Captain Nemo.

  I’d give Mailbags my spade.

  Juana that ten-dollar bill.

  Mama the puddle of thorns.

  I was so busy planning my last will and testament, I missed Ms. Wanbe’s first signal for recess. I scrambled out of my chair.

  We marched down the hall.

  My heart pounded. Lub-dub, lub-dub.

  I’d never noticed before how a heart—my heart—makes a kind of music. I didn’t want that music to stop.

  What had happened to my superhero strength? All I had left was anger—and fear.

  Anger and fear flopped back and forth in my stomach.

  I shuffled across the blacktop, past girls jumping rope. Lub-dub.

  Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle.

  I was a lub-dubbing missile, right on target.

  Steering toward Blood’s big, mean head.

  Blood’s mean, laughing mouth.

  Wham! I let him have it. Right in that mouth.

  I saw the surprise in his eyes before he went down.

  I jumped him. Wham, wham, wham. Ribs, nose, ribs.

  Then I was on my back. His big face sneered over me.

  Kids screamed.

  Wham. This time my face. Sweet blood rushed in my mouth.

  Somewhere Ms. Wanbe. “Boys! Boys!”

  She hauled us apart.

  “Who started this fight?”

  Blood sneered. I spat. The other kids were silent.

  Ms. Wanbe hauled us to the principal’s office, where he steepled his fingers at us.

  “Little punk jumped me,” Blood told him. “I don’t know why.”

  “What about my garden?” I said.

  “I know nothing about your garden.”

  “Liar.”

  “Boy, you are dead already,” said Blood. He calmly spiraled a tissue up his nose.

  The principal sent us home early. Mama picked me up and I left Blood slouched in his hard-backed chair. He still had that tissue cocked from his nose.

  Mama started the car.

  Then she started in on me.

  “Jackson, you better tell me why you are sitting in this car and not in that schoolroom.”

  “Got in a fight.”

  “And why did you get in a fight?”

  “Guy made me mad.”

  “That’s not like you, punching people. All this spring you’ve been happy in your garden—”

  “That garden’s nothing but trouble.”

  “Jackson!”

  “I’m going to dig it up.”

  Mama’s hands tightened on the steering wheel.

  “Destroy it.”

  “Fine,” said Mama. “Destroy it. Just keep out of fights. I can’t be hauling you home every other day.”

  A squirrel shot into the road, leapt, dived up a tree.

  “This city is no place for a boy. All this fighting, violence, drugs.” Mama was talking to herself. “I try to give you a safe neighborhood, a little piece of country…”

  “Mama,” I said, “I didn’t want a little piece of country. I wanted a basketball.”

  “Fine,” said Mama, wobbling the wheel.

  I stared out the car window. Streetlights, sidewalks, apartment buildings. In front of some town houses, little strips of flowers. Zinnias, marigolds, pansies. Last year they’d have been only colored blobs. Now I knew their names.

  “Jackson,” Mama said. Her voice sounded squeezed, like she was trying not to cry. “Didn’t you like the garden even a little?”

  Then out came the whole story: Reuben, business partner. Reuben, ex-business partner. Blood Green. Bouquet Jones. Puddle of thorns. No weeds. Seventy bucks. Birthday surprise. Lost flowers.

  “Not lost,” I said. “Killed.”

  Mama rolled down her window. “You were giving me a wonderful birthday present,” she said. “I can just imagine the smell of those flowers.” She breathed the city air deeply, coughed.

  “The zinnias didn’t really smell that great,” I said.

  “Never mind. I know they were beautiful.”

  We passed silver and glass buildings, brick fronts, card stores.

  “When I was pregnant”—Mama broke the silence—“I couldn’t decide whether to name my baby—that’s you—after my favorite flower or my favorite horse.”

  “What’s your favorite flower?”

  “Rose.”

  “I’m glad your favorite horse was Jackson.”

  Mama laughed. We passed some trees, pigeons, more flowers. I even saw zinnias. The red ones sort of reminded me of Juana. She has this red church dress that’s so stiff, it sticks out in layers. Like a zinnia. Funny how I’d never noticed that before.

  Mama suddenly giggled. “Who would have thought my baby would turn out to be not just a single flower—but a whole bunch.” She giggled again. “Bouquet Jones.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “Bouquet Jones.” Mama sniffed and coughed at the June air. “Where’s a good place for my birthday dinner?”

  That’s how Mama and I came to celebrate her birthday at the Space Shuttle Grill, where the soft ice cream comes in flying saucers.

  Reuben would have loved it. I could hardly wait to tell him.

  If I told him.

  Yeah, I decided, I’d tell him. And right after he apologized, I’d even give him my flying saucer.

  Riding home, I was full of good thoughts.

  I’d punished Blood.

  I’d forgiven Reuben. Well, at least in my heart. Tomorrow I would forgive him in person.

  I’d given my mother a wonderful birthday present. She said so.

  “Mama, do you mind that I was going to sell your birthday flowers to buy a basketball?”

  Mama shook her head.

  “I was giving you the look of the flowers,” I explained.

  “You were very clear about that.”

  I felt a surge of generosity. “The basketball costs twenty-four ninety-five,” I said, “so maybe I could just sell twenty-five flowers. That way you could see the flowers for longer than just your birthday.”

  I shifted in my seat. The city sped by.

  “That is, I could have done that if the flowers hadn’t been stolen.”

  All Mama said was “Flowers grow again.”

  • • •

  I went to bed feeling good.

  The next morning I woke up feeling sad.

  I remembered the look of those bare stems.

  Then, as if I had to torture myself, I dragged on my jeans, left a note for Mama, and slipped out the door.

  I took the roundabout way to school again.

  Slapped through the wet grass, opened the gate latch.

  Bird chatter. Woodpecker tat. Crunch of wood chips.

  Then I stopped.

  The garden.

  I couldn’t believe it.

  On each green stem—seventy to be exact—was a small, colored bow. Red bows. Yellow, blue, purple, white bows. Each bow tied precisely.

  Finicky bows.

  Perfect bows.

  There were even bows—I counted twenty-six—on the rosebush. They nestled in that mess of barbed sticks like little birds waiting to sing.

  Only one person could make bows like these.

  I could picture him measuring and cutting the ribbon, tying the knot, looping the rabbit ears, pulling. Maybe even untying the bow, looping it into perfection. It must have taken him hours. He was that slow. That precise.

  My man, Reuben.

  For the second day in a row I was late to school.

  “I suppose you were sick again,” said Ms. Wanbe.

  “Yes’m,” I said.

  “But you’re feeling better now.”

  “Much better.”

  Ms. Wanbe sighed.

  All during reading I waved at Reuben, made imaginary bows in the air.

  “Jackson,” said Ms. Wanbe, “you may
be feeling too good.”

  “Oh, no, Ms. Wanbe, just good enough.”

  Ms. Wanbe sighed again and signaled for recess.

  I caught up with Reuben, started walking real slow.

  “Blood’s going to kill you,” said Reuben. “You better be glad he’s not here today.”

  “Blood, Blood, Blood—is that all you can say? Where’s my big hello?” I was joking but feeling nervous at the same time. Not about Blood—about Reuben. See, I’d been so bent on winning our fight, proving I was right, that I’d forgotten, well, that Reuben was my friend. Now he does this nice bow-thing—and I feel like all this time I’ve been trying to win a race that wasn’t even a race.

  I did not feel cool.

  “Thanks for the bows.”

  “It’s nothing, man. Woolworth’s had a sale.”

  Still walking. Slow.

  “Miz Lady wants to bring your mama’s birthday cake to the garden. That okay?”

  More walking.

  “We could be partners again,” I said. “Except the garden’s not much now.”

  More walking.

  “How you doing with Captain Nemo?”

  “Okay,” said Reuben. “Miz Lady said my last strip was great.”

  My spirit sank to the toes of my Air Jordans.

  “She said the drawing was very detailed”— Reuben eyeballed me—“but the writing had lost its spark.”

  My spirit leapt up past my knees.

  Suddenly Reuben bonked my head. I poked his arm. And before I knew it, I had promised him my Space Shuttle Grill ice cream saucer.

  “Reuben,” I said, “I’m sorry I said you were slow.”

  “Precise,” said Reuben.

  That’s how Mama got two birthday celebrations in a row—one at the Space Shuttle Grill and one at the garden.

  She liked Reuben’s bows. She liked Miz Lady’s pineapple surprise cake. She liked Mailbags’s gift of two crookneck squash.

  She loved the flowers I bought from the florist. Even though they were a rip-off. Ten dollars for two wrinkled yellow roses and a tuft of leaves.

  Abraham even came.

  “I thought a garden would be the death of you,” I said.

  “Just came to sing happy birthday to your mother.”

  “I hope you can stay for cake,” said Mama.

  “I hope so too,” said Abraham.

  Abraham ate his usual two slices of cake. I didn’t even tease him, I felt that good.

  “I even got myself a present.” Mama laughed and waved a package of zinnia seeds. “I’m hoping Jackson will share a corner of his garden.”